Anne Arundel County Greenways Master Plan
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Anne Arundel County Greenways Master Plan Adopted October 15, 2002 Winner of 2002 Smart Growth Award for Government Innovation Maryland Economic Growth, Resource Protection and Planning Commission 2002 Award for Outstanding Plan for a Jurisdiction Over 100,000 Population Maryland Chapter of the American Planning Association Note This plan with larger scale color maps and a photographic base can be viewed on Anne Arundel County’s internet site at www.aacounty.org. Follow links from the Hot Topics, Department of Recreation and Parks, or from the Office of Planning and Zoning pages. County Executive Janet S. Owens Dennis Callahan, Director Denis Canavan, Department of Recreation and Parks Planning Officer County Council Pamela G. Beidle Bill D. Burlison John J. Klocko Daniel E. Klosterman Jr. Shirley Murphy Barbara Samorajczyk Cathleen M. Vitale Department of Recreation and Parks Brian J. Woodward, Chief of Natural and Cultural Resources Office of Planning and Zoning Richard Josephson, Chief of Long Range Planning Technical Advisory Committee Charlie Abrahamson, Office Elinor Gawel, Office of Lisa Gutierrez, Maryland of Planning and Zoning Planning and Zoning Greenways Commission Wink Hastings, National Park William Jenkins, MD Jack Keene, Department of Service Department of Natural Recreation and Parks Resources Natalie Latham, Office of Barbara Polito, Department of Jody Vollmer, Office of Planning and Zoning Recreation and Parks Planning and Zoning John Wolf, MD Department of Natural Resources Consultant Team Environmental Resources Management, Annapolis, Maryland Sprinkle Consulting, Laurel, Maryland Elizabeth Watson, Greenbelt, Maryland --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgements Special thanks to the South County Exchange Greenway Committee for the Patuxent River Greenway Case Study Cover picture of Red Fox from the Bay Journal, Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay. October 2002 Anne Arundel County Greenways Master Plan Executive Summary The purpose of the Anne Arundel County Greenways Master Plan (the Plan) is to provide an identification, decision making, implementation, and management tool for the County’s future greenways network. The Plan has a long range, 50 plus year time frame. Anne Arundel County enjoys a very attractive location on the Chesapeake Bay close to Washington and Baltimore. This location continues to attract many people to live and work and enjoy the high quality of life that is available in the County. Future growth in Anne Arundel County threatens the loss of ecologically valuable land including unspoiled, high-quality landscapes and open space. The scattered pattern of modern development tends to consume large amounts of land and fragments landscapes. Fragmentation has adverse ecological effects but also has negative effects on the quality of life through the loss of landscape character and scenic beauty, loss of open spaces for people to enjoy, loss of recreational opportunities, and reduced air and water quality. The most effective way to prevent these negative effects in a developed area such as Anne Arundel County is to create an interconnected network of protected open space corridors or greenways. Anne Arundel County’s goal for its greenways network, therefore, is to: Create an interconnected network of greenways in Anne Arundel County that protects ecologically valuable lands for present and future generations and provides open space, recreational, and transportation benefits and opportunities for people. The benefits of Anne Arundel County’s greenways network will be to: • Enhance the beauty of the County’s landscape by reducing the fragmenting effects of development and preserving valuable open space; • Provide adequate habitat to support healthy populations of a diversity of naturally occurring plant and animal species; • Help guide the location of development so that negative effects on ecologically valuable lands are minimized; • Link communities to a countywide network of open space; • Provide off-road transportation opportunities; • Increase recreational opportunities; • Improve water and air quality; • Improve the economy by maintaining and increasing property values and by attracting visitors; • Encourage the ethic of stewardship of the land in the County; and • Help achieve the recommendations of county, regional and state plans and programs including Anne Arundel County’s General Development Plan, Land Preservation and Recreation Plan, and Small Area Plans, the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement, and Maryland’s Greenprint program. Three key factors came together and led Anne Arundel County to prepare this Plan: • The State of Maryland’s green infrastructure initiative; a statewide effort by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to identify and protect large, contiguous blocks of ecologically significant natural areas (hubs) and to link them with natural corridors; October 2002 ES-1 Anne Arundel County Greenways Master Plan • Anne Arundel County’s General Development Plan and the recommendations from 12 completed “Small Area” land use and community plans for different parts of the County that included recommendations for greenways and additional bicycle and walking opportunities; and • Anne Arundel County’s land preservation and recreation planning program, especially the recommendations of the current Land Preservation and Recreation Plan. The Plan takes a primarily ecological approach to defining greenways, but also includes in the proposed greenways network countywide multi-use trails including the East Coast Greenway and the American Discovery Trail. Greenways were identified by analyzing different mapped information, studies, databases, and aerial photographs of Anne Arundel County to identify areas currently meeting the criteria or areas where greenways could, potentially, be created in the future. The County used five criteria in assessing land as potential greenways: habitat value; size; connections to other land with ecological value; future potential, that is the potential to create greenways where they do not currently exist; and national and countywide trails. Based on the habitat requirements of selected locally occurring native bird, mammal, and amphibian species, a “hub” is defined in the Plan as an ecologically significant natural area of at least 250 acres with a high ratio of interior versus edge habitat. A corridor is a natural area at least 200 feet wide. Under the criteria, hubs and corridors must connect and “dead end” corridors are not included in the network unless the dead end is a large enough to serve as a hub (i.e. at least 250 acres). The proposed greenways network is shown on Figure 5 of the Plan (see next page). The network covers approximately 71,700 acres, equivalent to 27 percent of Anne Arundel County’s total land area. Greenways are distributed in all parts of the County. Approximately 36,900 acres, or 51 percent of the proposed network, are currently protected as one or more of the following: state, federal, county and City of Annapolis owned lands; agricultural and environmental easements; private conservation lands; and land that is in the County’s Open Space zoning district. The network is divided into 41 greenway segments each of which has been given a name, generally based on streams (see Figure 5). For purposes of implementation and management some of these segments could be combined and the Plan does group the 41 segments into 13 geographic groups. The proposed greenways network incorporates most of the greenways recommendations of the Small Area Plans, Maryland Atlas of Greenways, and Anne Arundel County Land Preservation and Recreation Plan. The proposed greenways network does not, however, include all land in the County that is ecologically sensitive or otherwise worthy of protection. The fact that such lands are not included in the greenways network is not intended to diminish their importance or to imply that they should not be protected. A variety of laws and programs exist to protect sensitive areas that lie outside the greenways network. Although desirable, it may not be possible to protect all land within the proposed greenways network. If because of development the entire area within a greenway cannot be protected, the Plan recommends that the County, through proactive planning and protection measures including the development approval process, seek to protect that portion of the developable land that would be needed to preserve the “integrity” i.e., the wholeness and continuity of the greenway. The greenways network identifies approximately 100 “critical connections”; areas where if a connection cannot be made, a greenway segment will be incomplete and be unable to serve its functions in the network. The largest category of critical connections is where greenways cross roads. Public use of greenways will range from no use to quite heavy use. The Plan does not, however, identify which greenways should or should not have public use. This question is to be determined on a case by case basis in developing implementation/management plans for individual greenways. October 2002 ES-2 Anne Arundel County Greenways Master Plan fevswyi2gs DEFVWS fevswyi2 fevswyi2 tpso2iver gy xtpso2lley2I gy x DEFTWS gin2frnh2greek fs2ril DEFPWS G@I tpso2lley2P tony2greek toney2un fltimore222222222222222282222222222222222ennpolis222222222222222rilwrley2greek iney2un IHH wmill2greek port2mllwood iney2un2to2 34 toney2un wgothy2iver2E2 ryeh2222222222222222gy x wrley2greek2 toney2greek 34PWS